Opinion by: Merav Ozair, PhD, blockchain and AI senior advisor.
Elon Musk and Peter Diamandis promote the idea that AI will make “everything free,” ending poverty and enabling universal high incomes. Others in tech speak of a coming abundance — Demis Hassabis calls it a “renaissance” of “radical abundance.” Politicians at Davos embraced this vision, eager for economic problems to be “set free.” It’s an appealing story: who wouldn’t want free goods and services? But what does “free” truly mean? Would economic activity incur no costs? Would corporations stop seeking profit? We should unpack the narrative.
The cost of production can be cheap, but never zero
Even with advanced AI, products and services won’t appear from thin air. They still require labor, materials, energy and infrastructure. AI, automation, advanced manufacturing (3D printing, robotics), and abundant energy could drive marginal costs of many digital and physical goods toward zero. Automation replaces human labor, sophisticated manufacturing reduces waste and inventory, and abundant energy removes a major bottleneck.
Still, falling marginal costs don’t eliminate all costs. Building the infrastructure that enables near-zero marginal cost — data centers, manufacturing plants, robotics fleets, and energy systems — requires massive upfront investment and ongoing maintenance. Plans like Musk’s lunar manufacturing and large-scale solar aim to push energy costs down, but the initial expense and technical hurdles are enormous.
Infrastructure is the missing layer nobody talks about
To produce abundance at scale, robotics and AI must run on massive, high-performance infrastructure. Jensen Huang has described “AI factories”: specialized computing centers that convert raw data into trained models and applications. These facilities — expensive to build and operate — are the engines behind autonomous vehicles, robotics, and generative AI.
Whoever owns these AI factories gains outsized advantages. Companies with the capital to build and scale such infrastructure will capture most of the value, increasing productivity and profits and concentrating wealth. Nvidia, AWS, and SpaceX are examples of firms positioned to dominate. Governments are also key players; China’s integration of renewable energy into its infrastructure creates an “AI and energy” ecosystem that further centralizes power.
Cheap energy is not cheap
Energy is the fuel for AI factories and the broader automation economy. Without very cheap, scalable energy, abundance at scale is impossible. Today’s electricity grids and generation capacity are costly and limited in scale relative to what AI-enabled production would require.
Options like nuclear fission are mature but carry waste, safety and proliferation concerns. Fusion promises nearly limitless, cleaner energy but remains experimental and demands huge upfront investments likely decades away from commercial scale. Even if fusion or vast solar deployment becomes feasible, someone must pay the capital and maintenance costs — energy isn’t literally free.
Elon Musk is going to the moon
Lunar solar power offers abundant energy unconstrained by atmosphere, and Musk’s vision includes moving production and AI infrastructure off Earth. Low lunar gravity and nearby resources could support robots that build infrastructure and AI data centers. If atomically precise manufacturing (APM) and lunar fabrication succeed, they could unlock massive economic opportunities. But transporting and operating highly precise manufacturing equipment on the moon entails staggering costs and technical challenges. If these plans pay off, they could create enormous value — and the owners of that infrastructure would capture most of it.
The soft prison of “free”
Centralized infrastructure means centralized control. Whether owned by governments, corporations, or public‑private partnerships, infrastructure owners determine terms of access and distribution. “Free” services often come at the cost of surveillance, profiling, and behavioral manipulation — today your data and attention are the prices you pay. In an AI-abundant world, the price may be deeper: your autonomy and self-sovereignty.
A centralized provider can limit access, shape speech, influence movement, or shut off services entirely. Dependency on a single infrastructure creates a “soft prison” where guaranteed services are exchanged for diminished individual freedom. Even if abundance exists theoretically, distribution will be controlled. The lion’s share of any hundred‑trillion‑dollar opportunity will flow to infrastructure owners, who will define what trickles down.
They say if something is “free,” you are the product. In a world of AI abundance, the product may be your self-sovereignty.
Opinion by: Merav Ozair, PhD, blockchain and AI senior advisor.
